Monthly Archives: June 2017

The June 2017 GSM has concluded and the results are in. Also included are the final results for City Rank Candidate Batch #13 and the MRT Screenshot Contest 2017. As always, the recording for the public portion can be listened to here.

United Cities and Mod Demotion

It has come to the staff’s attention that recently there has been several incidents of disrespect and needless drama within the in-game political organization known as the United Cities. Up to this point, the staff has taken a largely hands-off approach towards these kinds of member-run organizations, because we believe a high amount of autonomy and freedom for players allows them to effectively roleplay, self-organize, and ultimately have a lot of fun. However, when players take these organizations too seriously by shutting out other players from participating or making personal attacks against them, then that crosses the line and violates server rules. We would like everyone of the Most Important Rule #4:

Remember that this is just a game. Chill out and have fun. 🙂

For the time being, the United Cities will be allowed to continue to operate normally. However, if the staff hear about any further incidents of disrespect or exclusion resulting from the UC, we will intervene with possible actions including anything from warnings to the total dissolution of the UC.

Finally, due to his direct involvement with these latest incidents in the UC, I have decided to demote jphgolf4321 to [Trial Mod]. Up to this point, the [Trial Mod] rank has been used for new moderators who must go through a 3-month probation period before becoming full moderators. In the past, I have given existing mods warnings for undesired behaviour, but these warnings are usually not public information. Starting from now, I have decided that when a mod is warned, they will be demoted to [Trial Mod] to indicate their warning to all players. They will also go through a 3-month probation period, at the end of which, the admins and myself will make a determination whether they should re-promoted back to full moderator or not.

Summer 2017 Events Incentive

To encourage more member-organized events during the busy summer, we will be allowing members to ask for grants of in-game money from staff. The amount that can be asked for the event will depend on its size and attendance, but for reference the largest events (i.e. The Amazing Race) can be granted a maximum of $10,000. For competitions, sports events, game shows, and award shows, the grant money must be used primarily for prizes, and the money must be distributed in a fair manner (i.e. no rigged voting or awarding prizes to friends). For other events including expos, conventions, etc., the grant money can be used to facilitate the operation of the event.

To apply for a grant for your event, please e-mail staff [at] minecartrapidtransit.net with your proposal. Staff will provide feedback about your proposal within a few days. Your event must satisfy all the conditions of events added to the Events Calendar, which are re-iterated here:

The event must be open to all MRT members, for either watching the event or actively participating in the event.

Examples of what is NOT allowed: Grand openings of any franchise, business, station, road, or transport facility.

If you have an event that does not fall into any of the above categories, please ask an admin to see if the event would be okay to be added.

The event must have a detailed wiki page that describes the nature of the event, date(s) and time(s) for the event, and any prizes or voting schemes if any.

MRT Server 5th Anniversary

The server’s 5th anniversary is coming up on July 13th. While no concrete plans for events have been made by staff, some ideas that we are floating include a community build such as a new town or amusement park, or events on the Old World such as a tournament at the old spleef arenas, or games such as Connect 4 at the Redstone Gaming Centre, or Deal or No Deal at the studios in the Industrial District of Spawn City. More details will be posted soon!

Air-based Town Transit

Recently, there have been a few new towns that are being built in terrain where conventional ground-based transport such as roads and rails is not feasible. For these towns, we will be allowing the construction of local air-based warp sign transit such as air balloons, air cars, etc. If you think your town falls under this criteria and would like to build a form of local air-based transit, please contact a staff member for confirmation.

Roads

Only one road proposal was considered in this month’s GSM. The A50/B515, proposed by VernCow, has been approved as a B-road only. VernCow may resubmit a proposal to make it an A-road at the next GSM.

Projects

The following projects have been approved:

Stoneedge Orcus Heliport (proposed by SoSo123), with the condition that it is not expanded in the future, and that is kept realistic.

Central City Amusement Park (proposed by JTrain77), with the condition that is is built on an empty plot on the outskirts of Central City.

Town Auctions

The following auctions have been approved:

Unnamed Town at 9662, 68, 5060 has been granted to tomtomy8 on the condition that he not only builds a rail line there, but he actually develops the town as well.

D13 has been granted to Narnia17.

C82 has been granted to _InDev_, with permission from MinecraftYoshi26 who was the former deputy mayor.

The following auctions have been denied or deferred:

F4/I4 will not be granted to MIKE24DUDE. We require more development and connectivity of Royal Ferry in F2 and F3 before considering accepting this request.

P22 and P23 will not be granted to ModernArt. Modern has asked for too many towns and needs to develop the towns he already has. P22 and P23 will be put up for general auction at the next GSM. Please e-mail staff if you are interested.

C46 will not be granted to mervynang yet, until we contact the mayor of V28, which is very close by.

ZS25 will not be granted to BernCow, he many reapply once he has developed his nearby town further.

City Rank Candidate Batch #13 Results

The latest candidate batch has concluded. The feedback document with votes from staff can be viewed here. In this batch, we welcome 3 new senators, with no new governor or premier promotions:

Woodsdale (Hightech_TR)

Dabecco (Sirots)

Verdantium (Mossie_1810)

Congratulations to all of you who were promoted!

City Rank Candidate Batch #14

Due to the accidental omission of several candidates in Batch #13, we will be starting staff voting Batch #14 early. This batch includes 5 senator candidates that were missed in the previous batch, as well as 2 additional senator candidates submitted afterwards. Staff voting is expected to conclude on June 30th, with promotions to be done on July 1st.

MRT Screenshot Contest 2017

The voting for the MRT Screenshot Contest 2017 has concluded. Thank you to everyone who submitted their screenshots and their votes to make this contest a great success. The final average scores can be viewed here, but the top 5 winners are:

1st Place: MikeRoma – Copperport

2nd Place: Mossie_1810 – Rainy Night in Verdantium

3rd Place: MC_Protocol – A Refreshing Day in Victoria

4th Place: camelfantasy – Fort Yaxier Central Station

5th Place: godzilltrain – Central Park in the morning

All prize moneys have been given out to all participants. The top 16 screenshots are now displayed in the revolving banner on the front page of this website, replacing the old submission from the last screenshot contest. If for any reason you do not want your screenshot to be displayed here, please let me (Frumple) know.

That is all for now. Once again, if you have any events that you would like run during this summer, please consider applying for your new incentive for in-game money and to submit your event on to the official MRT Events Calendar. We look forward to seeing many successful events happen in the coming months!

Thanks to everyone who submitted their images to the MRT Screenshot Contest 2017! We have 36 qualified submissions that are now available for public voting. Before you vote, please read the following points carefully:

You may submit the voting form ONLY ONCE. Any further submissions of this form after the first will be ignored. Please make sure the scores are correct before submitting, as you will not be able to correct them afterwards.

You must score ALL qualified submissions from 1 to 10.

Score screenshots that you like closer to 10, screenshots that you don’t like as much closer to 1, and screenshots that you think are “average” or have no opinion on closer to 5 or 6.

Please try to score the screenshot objectively on its technical and artistic merits. Do not base your score on your opinion of the person who took the screenshot.

Screenshot submissions are shown here in the order in which they were first submitted and qualified on the subreddit.

If you have difficulty viewing the screenshots in this form, you can also view them in this imgur album.

The winners will be announced at the next General Staff Meeting, now scheduled for Sunday, June 18th at 5 pm UTC (note the earlier start time instead of 7 pm UTC).

Speaking of the General Staff Meeting, the agenda at the time of this writing will cover the following topics:

Discussion of possible incentives to encourage more member-organized events during the busy summer

MRT Server 5th Anniversary celebration plans

Incredibly exciting road proposals

Absolutely thrilling project proposals

Utterly enthralling town auction requests

Please be sure to submit any proposals for roads, projects, and town auctions to the staff e-mail address 48 hours before the meeting by Friday, June 16th at 5 pm UTC, so that we have enough time to include into the agenda.

This is just a quick announcement introducing the new official MRT Events Calendar to the website. View the calendar at https://www.minecartrapidtransit.net/events. This admin-curated calendar will not only show important dates such as General Staff Meetings and City Rank Candidate Batch deadlines, but it can also include member-organized events such as game shows, award shows, competitions, etc.

For a member-organized event to be eligible for addition to the calendar, the event must satisfy the following criteria:

The event must be open to all MRT members, for either watching the event or actively participating in the event.

Examples of what is NOT allowed: Grand openings of any franchise, business, station, road, or transport facility.

If you have an event that does not fall into any of the above categories, please ask an admin to see if the event would be okay to be added.

The event must have a detailed wiki page that describes the nature of the event, date(s) and time(s) for the event, and any prizes or voting schemes if any.

To submit a member-organized event for consideration, please send an e-mail to admin [at] minecartrapidtransit.net (not staff) with a link to your wiki page.

It is my hope that this calendar will help bring more visibility into events happening on the server, especially with the busy summer approaching. In addition, the staff and I will be considering some proposals at the next GSM to possibly introduce in-game money grants / incentives to encourage more member-organized events, or allowing such events to advertised on official channels, such as the MRT Twitter. More details will be posted after the GSM, which itself will be scheduled and added to the calendar within the next few weeks.

Also a reminder that submissions for the MRT Screenshot Contest 2017 close this Saturday June 3rd at 11:59 pm UTC! To submit, please read the full contest rules on the subreddit.